


transcontinental flight

by radialarch



Category: Crooked Media RPF
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-12-25
Updated: 2017-12-25
Packaged: 2019-02-15 19:55:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13038285
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/radialarch/pseuds/radialarch
Summary: It takes Tommy four years to move to LA.(Coming out, and coming home.)





	transcontinental flight

**Author's Note:**

  * For [nahco3](https://archiveofourown.org/users/nahco3/gifts).



> Happy yuletide, Grace, I hope you enjoy this!
> 
> A sincere note of thanks to those without whom this fic really would not have been possible, and a dubious one to 2017 for delivering several heretofore unimagined coping mechanisms.

> **Pod Save America** @PodSaveAmerica  
>  Merch is coming. Our kickstarter is capitalism.
> 
> **Tommy Vietor** @TVietor08  
>  these shirts are so exclusive that I don't even have one
> 
> **Jon Lovett** @jonlovett  
>  MOVE TO LA
> 
> — [Twitter](https://twitter.com/jonlovett/status/824820856022933504), January 26, 2017

 

**2011**

It’s the height of summer when Tommy gets out of work and finds Lovett crying on the sofa.

“You okay?” Tommy says uncertainly, hovering by the door. “Should I, uh, call somebody, or—”

“No, don’t, it’s, I’m not sad,” Lovett says. “One of the guys at DoD sent me—” He uncurls out of his seat, still sniffling, clutching his phone. Tommy goes over and pats him carefully on the shoulder before he takes it.

It's a wire from Reuters. _Military members march for San Diego gay pride_ , he reads, then looks up. “Lovett.”

“It’s stupid,” Lovett says. “I knew things were gonna—god, I wrote the fucking speech when Congress passed the repeal, but I don’t know, it hit me and I was just so— _glad_ , for everyone who did it, who came out and—” He wipes his eyes with the back of a hand, lets out a sudden laugh. “It’s not like I ever thought about joining the military, but it’s good, you know? It’s a good thing, what happened.”

 _I did_. _Think about it._ The thought slams into Tommy like a shock. For a moment, he can’t breathe from the force of it.

When he was six, Tommy decided he was going to join the Air Force when he grew up. It was a dream that got fainter as time went on, until he’d finally let it go for good. The idea was mostly a fantasy, anyway, cobbled together from books and movies and stories that his dad told him on lazy Sunday afternoons.

He hasn’t thought about that in years.

He looks back down at the article. There’s a picture of service members in the parade. They’re not in uniform but their t-shirts make their allegiances clear just the same. And when the certification finally comes through, they’ll be able to do it for real.

“It is,” he says, and presses the phone back into Lovett’s hand. “It’s good. You should be—you should be proud, for being—” Jesus, now his voice is going cracked. “For being a part of this administration, for doing—”

“I didn’t.” Lovett shrugs, a tight motion. “Not really. Not enough, not half the things I could have—” He catches himself. “But, you know. I was here.”

It mattered, Tommy thinks. It matters, that Lovett had been here; that there’d been someone to write the speeches and mourn the setbacks and then, too, to cry over the victories.

Lovett's leaving in September. “Yeah,” Tommy tells him, an inadequate substitute for too many things at once. “You were. You were here.”

 

**2012**

In May, Lovett tells Tommy the story of how he came out to Hillary Clinton.

Jon's just back from the fundraiser POTUS did in LA, talking about leaving the White House for good. Tommy, whose job is less campaign-related these days, didn't get to make it out there. But Jon's asking Tommy to come with him, when he goes, and Tommy hasn't figured out how he feels about that.

So, he takes five minutes at the end of lunch, ducks out into a stairwell and calls Lovett.

"Hey," Lovett says when he picks up. "You know you and Jon and like five other people all texted me to watch _Good Morning America_ last week? I don't know what kind of operation you guys are running over there, but all these leaks, seems like a problem. Someone should look into it."

"Yeah, Alyssa's really concerned about it," Tommy agrees. “You'll know how it ends when we all text you about the person who's getting fired.” Last week, Barack Obama had publicly affirmed his support of same-sex marriage for the first time. It was only fair: if Lovett had still been here, he'd certainly have had a hand in the draft of the remarks. "So, uh, what'd you think?"

"Oh, well," Lovett says, in the pleased, drawn-out tone that marks the beginning of a riff, "it's great. My mother now has presidential blessing to ask me when I’m gonna find a nice guy and settle down. Mom, I say, the President hasn't actually overturned Prop 8, the laws are all still there. Oh, but that's fine, she says, I can always move back and get married in New York. You know what? Fuck Andrew Cuomo, and fuck the entire New York state legislature."

Lovett’s grinning throughout the whole thing; Tommy can hear it in his voice. “When _are_ you going to settle down?” he asks, the set-up too obvious to resist, and bites down a smile at the groan from the other end of the line.

“But yeah,” Lovett says, softer, lower, “it was good. It’s, you know, it was time, the politics have been moving this way for a while. Maybe at some point I’ll even figure out how to tell Obama about, god, his own backyard—” He breaks off. “A plank in the 2012 Democratic platform, right? That’s a start.” 

Lovett’s quiet for a minute, and Tommy suddenly, desperately wants to see his face. Wants to know what he's feeling, that the White House couldn't get here until he left, a place it should have been all along.

“Did you ever think about asking—” Tommy stops himself. Lovett knew what his job entailed when he took it. In the end, it wasn't supposed to matter whether Lovett disagreed. That was a lesson everyone in the communications department had to learn, if they wanted to stay. Lovett must have known that as well as Tommy did.

Lovett lets out a soft laugh. “You know, when I was working for Secretary—Senator Clinton then, I guess, I actually—I mean, I hadn’t told her I was gay when I started.”

“Sure.”

“It was—I was writing a speech, right, family values and all that bullshit, and I just, it was crazy, honestly, I got up in the middle of a draft and walked into the Senator’s office and told her, hey, by the way, I’m gay.”

“Oh.” Tommy’s throat’s gone tight. He breathes, in and out, trying to pull together something coherent in response. “What did she say?”

Lovett laughs. “She said, Jonathan, I know. So—yeah. She knew.”

Lovett had never, Tommy thinks, asked for this while he was in the White House. Never said that he was right and Barack Obama was wrong, even though it was true. But he hadn’t been silent. Even outside Washington, where every choice was political, it meant something that Tommy had always known this about Lovett. 

“She got there in the end, too,” Lovett says quietly. “So hey, by the time I find someone who’ll marry me, it might even be legal. California, the whole damn country, who knows.”

“Yeah,” Tommy echoes, “maybe.” There’s something else in the back of his head, a memory, some half-formed thought he’d never managed to put into words, not even when— But it’s taking shape now, small and delicate, and Tommy rolls it over on his tongue, tries to figure out how it’d sound out loud. 

"But listen,” Lovett says, light, “when the hell are you coming out here? I hear you and Jon are gonna quit politics, get out of the swamp.”

“I—we’ve talked about it.” Tommy hesitates. Jon knows him, and he'd pitched it well: a life outside the fishbowl of DC, the show they always talked about writing. Yeah, Tommy wants it. But he doesn’t know if he wants it enough, to leave and give up the feeling of being part of something bigger.

“It’s kind of nice, you know.” Lovett sounds like he knows exactly what Tommy’s thinking. “Being a private citizen. Out here, you can say whatever the fuck you want.”

Maybe it’ll be easier then, finally the right time to voice all the things he’d put aside for later. Maybe the idea won’t feel like such a momentous, looming disaster when the only person he has to represent is himself.

“You say that like you haven’t been saying whatever the fuck you want for years,” Tommy says, and swallows down the rest. He's not going to be here forever; he'll have time, eventually, to figure out how to get this right.

Lovett’s voice is warm and familiar in his ear. Tommy lets himself fall back into the cadence of his words, a habit still, and thinks, distantly, of California.

 

**2013**

Tommy turns in his White House badge in March, but he doesn’t get out of DC for a while after that. It’s business, mostly: he does the rounds on cable, nabs names for the Fenway Strategies client list. He's starting a company, and that's complicated enough without adding a move into the mix.

“Dude,” says Jon, who’s at the UChicago IOP with Axe. “You just gotta go cold turkey, get out of the fucking city.”

“God, I know,” Tommy says, rubbing the bridge of his nose with his free hand. “Axe asked me to come for a term, I could take him up on it.”

“You should,” Jon says, “it’ll be fun. And like, we can do consulting anywhere.” There’s a knowing pause. “What’s stopping you?”

Tommy blows out a breath. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I don’t—look, you miss it, don’t you?”

He doesn’t have to clarify. “Sure,” Jon says immediately. “Always gonna miss it. But Tommy—it was fucking insane. I got tired. _You_ got tired.”

Tommy had lived through the frenetic pace of a presidential campaign; he thought he’d known what exhaution was. He hadn’t been prepared for the slow, wearying grind of bad news after bad news, an endless array of problems without answers. He remembers that he loved the job. He remembers, too, discovering that it was possible to be too tired to fall asleep; the night his brain gnawed away at itself until he realized, staring up into the dark, that he was going to have to leave.

“You said,” Jon reminds him now, “we couldn’t just keep doing the same things when we got out. So c’mon. Do something different.”

Tommy’s stopped having a security clearance, or morning briefings blocked off in his schedule. No press office is going to call him up to tone down a combative tweet. And maybe he’d been expecting all along that when those things changed, he’d change along with them. What’s the practical difference, after all, between doing something different, and _being_?

“What are you gonna do?” Tommy asks, an unsubtle change of topic. “After this.”

“Los Angeles,” Jon says promptly. “You know, Lovett wants you out there, too.”

“Yeah,” Tommy says, and presses a hand over his eyes. Jon makes it sound uncomplicated. It _should_ be uncomplicated. There’s no fucking reason why Tommy can’t go to California.

He writes Axe back late in the fall. He takes the fellowship in Chicago.

 

**2014**

Jon’s found a house in LA.

“Wait, it’s literally next to your house?” Tommy says.

“Technically, across the street,” says Lovett. Tommy can almost hear him shrugging over the phone. “I think Jon’s determined to collect everyone he’s ever known within a half-mile radius. He’s not even moving in for like six months and already he’s going domestic. Have I told you he’s trying to set me up?”

“Is he?” Tommy’s supposed to be clearing out his desk; he switches to speaker and sets his phone down so he can check all the drawers. “He’s always done that.” 

“With you, not with me,” Lovett says firmly. “You guys are bros. You wingman. You are that scene in _Top Gun_. But now Jon’s like, nesting. Brooding? What is the thing that chickens do, you probably know, like when they lay all their eggs and get incredibly soppy about it and then want everyone else to do the same thing.”

“I have no idea why you think I’d know that,” Tommy tells him, amused. “I’m not even sure that chickens actually—look, he’s happy, he wants his friends to be happy. Did you hate the guy?”

“Guys, multiple!” Lovett says, shrill. “I never thought I’d say this, but Jon and Emily know too many gay people.”

Jon had linked him up with a woman who worked in Chicago. Finance. She’d been lovely. They’d gone to dinner and Tommy had spent the whole time feeling like they were speaking different languages. It’s been a year since Tommy left the White House and he’s still disoriented, unsteady, the sensation of stepping on land after a long journey at sea lodged under his ribs.

If he went to LA—

If he went to LA, it wouldn’t matter, because Jon doesn’t know. Lovett’s always talked about this with a fluency Tommy isn’t sure how to achieve.

“—come out here,” Lovett’s saying. Tommy finishes up the packing and picks the phone back up, presses it to his ear. “I need you here, Jon can try to marry you off instead.”

The office is empty now, a mirror of when he first stepped into it. “Look, I just finished this fellowship,” he says. “Fenway’s doing okay—”

“ _Fenway_ ,” Lovett mutters. “You two are parodies of yourselves. If Jon can do consulting in LA, why can’t you?”

Tommy cracks a smile at the quotation marks he can hear in that sentence. _It’s a ridiculous job_ , Lovett had said, and then relented. _But so’s_ Hollywood writer _, when it comes to it_. “Ben’s in San Francisco,” he says, which isn’t precisely an answer. “Doesn’t have to be permanent, but I think I should be up there for a while.”

“San Francisco.” Lovett’s distaste is clear in every syllable. “Explain to me the appeal there, Tommy. Is it the fog? The endless hills? The ten thousandth guy who works in tech and is developing the Uber for bees?”

Part of the appeal, Tommy thinks ruefully, must be that it’s not Los Angeles. “Maybe I like bees,” he says, walking out of the office, and lets the door swing shut behind him. “Don’t worry about it, all right? I’ll come visit.”

 

**2015**

Tommy’s been home for about ten minutes when Dan calls.

“Hey,” he says. “Howli wants to know if you’re free next weekend, we’re getting a few people together for drinks.”

“Next weekend?” Tommy rubs a hand over his face and tries to think. “Sorry, man, I think I’m gonna be in LA.”

“That’s okay,” Dan says easily. “It’s nothing big, she just wanted me to ask. Maybe next time.” There’s a half-second’s pause. “Weren’t you _just_ in LA?”

“Had to go over some stuff with Jon.” Tommy smothers a yawn, rolls off the couch to settle onto the floor with a dull thump. “We’re doing like, a whole company reorganization.” He’s out of clean underwear, he’s pretty sure. Fuck. Half his clothes are back at Jon and Emily’s place. He should really get them something nice the next time he stays over.

“Doesn’t it seem kind of inefficient to you,” Dan says, considering, “that you decided to move to here when you’re spending most of your time in a different Californian city?”

“Jesus, not you, too.” Lovett had asked him the same thing, a few hours before Tommy was due at LAX. He can never figure out a good enough answer for Lovett.

“Sorry, wasn’t aware it was a whole thing.” 

Tommy winces. “Not your fault.” He’s been thinking about it more. “It’s—I don’t know, it’s complicated.”

“Is it?” Dan sounds curious. “I always thought you were gonna follow Favs and Lovett down there at some point.”

“I guess.” He tilts his head back, looks up at the ceiling. In some ways, it’s easier to talk to Dan about this. Dan’s not like Jon, forever cheerfully expectant; and he’s definitely not like Lovett, whose dissatisfied frown always leaves guilt somewhere in the pit of Tommy’s stomach. “There was some stuff I wanted to figure out first.”

“Okay, so what's the issue?”

“Nothing, really.” Tommy shrugs, a movement Dan won’t see. “I guess it felt too easy, going to LA. You know,” he says, struck by a thought, “you were with him—with Obama even longer than I was.”

“Huh. Yeah, I guess so.”

“You ever think maybe you never really left? Like you’re still—”

He trails off, but Dan’s drawing in a breath, sympathetic. “Oh man,” he says. “I know how that feels.”

“You ever do anything about it?”

“Well, in my case,” Dan says dryly, “my doctor told me that if I didn’t detach and get it under control I’d end up killing myself, so that was a big incentive.”

“Right.” Tommy lets out a soft laugh. At least he has that going for him.

“Look, the White House is big and exciting, and you get all these chances to work with people and projects you never would otherwise,” says Dan. “But there’s all this stuff you’re not allowed to do, either.”

“Go to a bar,” Tommy says absently.

“No, that was still you guys being idiots.” Dan laughs. “But sure, you can get photographed without a shirt on. You can pick a Twitter fight with Ari Fleischer. You never have to think about Benghazi again.”

Tommy groans. “You haven’t seen my mentions.”

“The point is, you can have fun with this. Turn off cable news once in a while. Do something—” Dan pauses, makes a thoughtful noise. “Something impossible.”

“You’re good at this,” Tommy says. “You give a lot of these pep talks?”

“More like, gotten a few.” Tommy can almost hear Dan’s smile. “Look, you’ll figure it out. Tell me when you’re around later. We’ll, I don’t know, go catch a Warriors game.”

 

**2016**

Lovett’s car breaks down on Sunset the day after the election.

“It’s not _broken_ ,” Lovett says as they all file out, “I forgot to get gas, the degrading morality of this country was on my mind, let’s all calm down.”

“Okay,” Jon says, frowning against the morning sun. “Can we, I don’t know, go _get_ gas?”

“What, in like, jerry cans?” Lovett says, disbelieving. “Do people still do that? I thought it was one of those things you only see in movies.”

“Of course people still—” Tommy breaks in, more sharply than he’d intended. They’re all a little on edge this morning. “How do you think people fill up like, onboard engines on speedboats?”

“Oh, well, sorry I don’t go yachting on a weekly basis—”

“Guys,” Jon says loudly. “Can we save this for later? We’re three dudes who used to work for the White House, we should be able to figure out how to get to the studio without killing any of ourselves in the process.”

Tommy turns to look at Jon. So does Lovett.

Grimly, Lovett says, “We’re gonna have to push, aren’t we.”

Tommy and Jon do most of the pushing, actually. Lovett’s in charge of watching where they're going. He's rolled the windows down, which means they’re carrying out a conversation in the meantime half through hoarse yelling and half in breathless squeaks.

It all feels, Tommy considers with some irony, like a giant brick of a metaphor.

“So look,” Jon says as they’re inching past the gleaming CNN studio. “What are we gonna do?” He’s not asking about the car. It’s the same conversation they were having before they broke down; the same one they’ve been having since last night, when the map turned redder and redder until none of them could pretend anymore that any amount of blue could turn it back.

“God, where do you fucking start?” Even through the sound of traffic, Tommy can pick up the frustration in Lovett’s voice. “This isn’t one problem, this is—there’s politics and then there’s all this bullshit around politics—”

“Fox News,” Tommy says.

“Right, so there’s Fox, and then there’s Rush Limbaugh or Breitbart or, I don’t know, Alex Jones, that purport to deliver information, except they don’t care about being objective, right, they don’t care about being _factual_. And then on our side we’ve got all these, these respectable outlets who are so careful about being unbiased, who’ll bend over backwards to make sure that both sides get a say, even when one side’s all bad faith with zero intention of having any kind of reasonable argument. So how do you—”

“Something’s fundamentally broken in the way we talk about politics,” Tommy agrees, “we’ve been saying that all along. We saw it in the Clinton Foundation debacle and the goddamn emails—”

“—when CNN or MSNBC lets Kellyanne Conway go on air and lie brazenly to reporters’ faces,” Jon says, “and the worst part is that it doesn't _change,_ like the whole Trump apparatus is Lucy with the football and they just keep lining up hoping that this’ll finally be the pivot they've been waiting for—”

”It is so laughable that he keeps tweeting about the crooked media,” Lovett says. “You know what, the real problem is that they're not crooked _enough_ , we could use some good, crooked media on our—”

Lovett trails off. Jon shoots Tommy a look and calls, “Lovett?”

“We could be that,” Lovett says urgently, turning to face them through the rear windshield, “we could—”

“Eyes on the road,” Tommy and Jon yelp at the same time. Lovett rolls his eyes at them both and swings forward again.

“I’m _saying_ , why wait for the, what, pundits on cable and the New York Times editorial board to get it together? We could do it.”

“Oh, I like it,” Jon says slowly. “Screw the both sides narrative. I’m so tired of—look, I’m not gonna apologize for being a Democrat. We’re highly partisan, we’re gonna talk about politics while being Democrats, that doesn’t mean our facts are wrong. If people are gonna take issue with that, that’s their problem.”

“No apologies, that should be our slogan,” Lovett says. “No apologies, no bullshit, and—”

“—and fuck you,” Tommy says. 

A beat, then they’re all bursting into laughter. It’s probably an incongruous sight, him and Jon braced against the back of Lovett’s car, Lovett at the wheel, laughing helplessly after an election they weren’t supposed to lose. But for the first time since the Florida returns started coming in, it feels like they can do something. And that’s hope—that’s how they start to fight this.

“So we’re doing this,” Lovett says, the frantic edge in his voice blunted for a moment. “We’re gonna be a, what, a progressive podcast?”

“A media company,” Jon says decisively. “We’ll found a company. We can do podcasts, we can write—and it’ll be ours, so nobody can tell us we can’t cover a topic, or to be more diplomatic, it’ll—”

“It’ll be _us_.” Something sparks in Tommy’s chest. “Just us.”

“Man, we really are the coastal elite,” Lovett says. “Look at us, starting a whole company just to solve our problems.”

“And we’ll be better,” says Jon, who’s never stopped pushing for that for as long as Tommy’s known him. “We have to be more honest with ourselves, we have to talk about the hard stuff—”

“Oh, have you not been telling us the hard stuff?” Lovett says easily. “Please, feel free to share.”

“Jesus, Lovett, were you waiting for that?”

Lovett’s grinning at them in the rearview mirror, Jon’s mouth twitching despite himself. Tommy looks at them both and feels so fond that his breath catches in his throat; thinks, yeah, maybe it’s that easy. Maybe it’s just a matter of practice, saying it out loud, making it real.

“Speaking of,” he says, “in the spirit of full disclosure, I’m—in college, I had a, there was a guy that.” Christ. He shoves harder against the car and tries to get himself together. It’s not that complicated.

“What?” Jon says.

“You had—” Lovett jerks his head around to stare at Tommy. “You were engaged.”

“I know.”

“To a _woman_ ,” Lovett says, like it needs the clarification.

“I know,” Tommy says again. “Dude, seriously, the road.”

Lovett’s completely still for a moment. “So you’ve been,” he finally says, settling back into his seat, “uh, been trying to tell us that for a while?”

“I guess.” Tommy grits his teeth and makes himself look up. “I’ve been thinking about trying again. Dating a guy.”

Jon’s expression is shifting from bewildered into something else. “Wow,” he says, “Tom, I didn’t—” He pauses, then offers Tommy a sheepish grin. “You know, I think Emily knows this guy in San Francisco, works with the ACLU there, I could—”

“Oh my god,” Lovett says, starting to laugh, “you’ve known for like two seconds, Favreau, give the guy a minute.” He’s still grinning, a little rueful, when he catches Tommy’s eyes in the mirror. “You know that, like, there are gay men in places other than San Francisco, right?” he says. “Just putting that out there, if you were—if you were thinking about that.”

They’re nearly at the studio. Tommy can’t do anything to change the election results, but he’s got his friends and a plan to do something about it. He exhales slowly and feels a knot of tension, wound tight with time, start to unravel inside him. “Yeah,” he says. “Yeah, I know there’s—well. Thank you.”

 

**2017**

Tommy’s supposed to be renewing his lease. He considers the contract in front of him, glances out at the bay, and then puts his pen down.

Lovett answers on the second ring. “Hey,” he says. “What if I’m not funny?”

“Are you fishing?” Tommy says suspiciously. “Didn’t you get voted funniest person in DC for like, two years running?”

“Funniest person in DC is a _very_ low bar,” Lovett informs him. “Listen, I’ve done my share of stand-up, which, gotta tell you, not a smashing success, and Hollywood hasn’t exactly welcomed me with open arms, either. Maybe it’s like that thing about the dog, you know. Nobody’s impressed because the dog’s _good_ at walking.”

“Is this about your show?” Tommy blinks. “Hey, stop freaking out. I thought you said it wasn’t gonna be comedy. You actually, explicitly called it a political panel with funny bits, not the other way around.”

“I know.” Lovett sounds glum. “I was trying to make myself feel better. Ah, well, what’s a Jon Lovett venture if it doesn’t involve plunging headlong into a situation I’m not remotely qualified to handle.” He lets out his breath, slow. “What’s up?”

“I was gonna ask you something,” Tommy says. “But maybe I shouldn’t while you’re in the grip of existential doubt.”

“Don’t be all considerate of my feelings,” Lovett says. “I should’ve known you’d be like this as a boyfriend. As long as you’re not bailing out of _your_ panel, ask me whatever you want.”

It’s still a surprise, sometimes, the way Lovett can say it so casually. Tommy’s had a lifetime of practice thinking around the idea in his own head, something he wasn’t supposed to have, but Lovett, the easy way he takes it as fact, always makes it so solidly real.

“Right, so about that.” Tommy looks at the lease again. “Do you think I should move to LA?”

“Are you fucking—” Lovett’s outrage is predictable; Tommy knows exactly what his face would look like. “Should you move—do I think you should do the thing I’ve been telling you to do for years? What the hell kind of question is that?”

“So I’ll put you down as a maybe,” Tommy says. “No, so here’s the deal, I know we’ve only been—” he considers a wide array of words “—like, dating for a few months, but my lease here is up and I wanted to ask—”

“Yeah?” Lovett says. He’s waiting for Tommy. That’s fair, Tommy supposes; probably shouldn’t let a guy live with you if he can’t even say it.

“What do you think about me moving in with you?”

The first time’s the hardest, isn’t it? After that, it’s just a matter of habit.

“I should’ve known,” Lovett says, light and teasing, “you only asked me out because you didn’t wanna go house hunting.”

“Yeah, that was the master plan, I was really playing the long con there.” Tommy waits a moment. “So is that a yes, or—”

“Well, I gotta ask Pundit first,” Lovett says, “can’t make these big decisions without asking the other occupant of the—yes, Tommy, that’s a yes. Move in with me. Come to LA.”

Tommy’s been circling around this for years, trying to figure out how he fit into this place. And this, now: this finally feels right. This feels like something he can do.

“Okay,” he says. Looks out the window and lets himself imagine going home. “I will.”


End file.
